21/12/2024
📝 Written By : Yasir Irshad
Pakistan Railway's Dilemma
Railways have played an integral role in the country's communication and transportation means. Despite its decades-old carriage coaches, worn-out locomotive engines, and railroads, thousands of passengers daily prefer train journeys. But unfortunately, this sector always remains in loss. There are unpaid employees, mainly gangmen and linemen, who have the toughest jobs. I could say here that I have had the opportunity to travel by train not less than 150 to 180 times throughout my life. So here, I couldn't blame the political and policy factors behind this deficit but the issues which I have actually seen with my own eyes.
1. A lot of passengers travel without tickets with the hope that they know they will manage. But how do they do so? Because they know that whatever the ticket fare would be, they simply have to hand over a third of the fare to the S.T.E. (Station Ticket Examiner). Suppose the fare is 900 Rupees, then 300 would be the S.T.E.'s rate, and this mechanized system happens mostly in passenger trains where passengers are more. In the long-route trains, this system of corruption exists but comparatively less than in the passenger trains.
2. The workers of the railway collect tons of scrap iron daily after the wear and tear of trains during their discourse. Rather than sending it back to the carriage factory to recycle and reutilize it, they simply and customarily share it amongst themselves according to their influence in the department. The officers in the railway department take the lion's share.
3. The owners of cargo trains who rent freight trains from the railway department get assistance and remuneration for labor from railway workers. They have created a separate monopoly over the cargo shipments or freight trains. They propose their own fares to the goods consumers. They are just like IPPs in the energy sector.
The solutions to these might require some genuine efforts and policy amendments. We could tackle those who travel without tickets by installing or applying AFCs (Automatic Fare Collection systems) with the help of RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification), which automatically detects the fare. The best example of this system is the Orange Line Train in Lahore. Without involving ticket checkers, we could somehow stop this sort of corruption. InshAllah.
